“Rental Family” has Brendan Fraser, a Best Actor Oscar winner for “The Whale,” in an unexpected change of pace in this sweetly knowing, Tokyo-set character study about a really odd Japanese occupation.

Namely, if you want a token white guy to attend the funeral service of a prominent Japanese businessman, look no further than an agency who will book an actor to attend.

Or what if a single mother wants her young daughter to leave the city for a new life – only the little girl wants to say goodbye to her daddy?  Mom wants nothing to do with the real father, so she hires someone to impersonate the child’s missing parent.

Hikari, the film’s co-writer and director, was born Mitsuyo Miyazaki in Osaka, Japan. In 1976, she came as a 17-year-old exchange student to the US.

“I was the only Asian girl in a little town in Utah,” she recalled in a virtual press conference with Fraser.

She asked herself, What if this character goes to Japan? What are the possibilities when they discover the job of being a rental family?

“It is unique to Western audiences but it’s been around in Japan since the ‘80s. What kind of people use these services? Why do they do this?

“Starting from the pandemic gave us inspiration to dig into what this story is about.”

“The opportunity to go to Japan to make a movie was a dream job,” Fraser, 56, said of playing Phillip Vanderploeg, a good-hearted, mildly successful American actor living in Japan who occasionally works for the Rental Family agency. He can’t help himself when it comes to breaking rules to help clients.

“This is unique,” Fraser said of making a movie where English wasn’t the first language. “I was only happy to listen and I knew (Hikari) would be an excellent collaborator and find people who are the best at their job.

“I want,” he added of this stage of his life, “to be in projects that I care about, that have something to say.”

Which made it easy to immerse himself ahead of filming in the culture. “Just be real,” he figured. “Go to the place. Know your lines. Learn to speak as much Japanese as I could convincingly.

“My Japanese was okay. I could speak and I had plenty of people to help me along the way. I wanted to sound like an expat, the way they would understand Japanese.

“The surprising thing? I loved wearing a kimono. I was surprised by how authentic it was. I felt important in that outfit, a real cool dude. I was surprised by how everyone was helpful and kind. That surpassed my expectations.”

“Rental Family” opens Nov. 21

Shannon Gorman and Brendan Fraser in “Rental Family. (Photo James Lisle/Searchlight Pictures.)